A fee of 25,500 euros ($32,000) is way too much for a woman to charge a man for fondling her bosom, a Finnish district court ruled.

The court jailed a couple in their twenties for more than a year for charging a 74-year-old who suffers from dementia a total of 25,500 euros to enjoy the woman's breasts on 10 occasions.

"Based on general life experience alone, it is indisputably clear that a 25,500 euro charge is disproportionate to the compensation in question," Judge Hasse Hakki, who heard the case, told Reuters Friday.

Indisputably.

I've never been to Finland. I don't know much of anything about this country. But it seems to be a pretty clear indication of Patriarchy when a government official in a trusted position having power over the citizenry -- a man -- passes official judgment on some sort of maximum value a woman's breasts can have even to other men.

If she wants to sell fondling rights, why can't she charge anything she wants? Is breast fondling considered an essential commodity in Finland, something like water, food, medicine...? Is breast fondling just too essential of a privilege of men to allow a woman to charge too much money to let a man fondle her own breasts?

Actually, I expect that you will continue to scream and shout and smear as nastily as you want, so long as you think that that kind of behavior sells books. But we have tackled bigger bullies than you and lived through far worse circumstances than your book tour. We're not intimidated by you. We're not running away.

And under no circumstances will we be silenced by your "godless" rantings and ravings.

Kristen Breitweiser
New York City
June 2006

Read how she got to this paragraph. Very powerful, and reveals just how shallow the Coulter clown's antics really are in the face of reality.

Despite a sharp increase in the prosecution of terrorism cases just after Sept. 11, 2001, only 14 of the defendants have been sentenced to 20 years or more in prison, according to a study based on Justice Department data.

Of the 1,329 convicted defendants, only 625 received any prison sentence, said the study, released Sunday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research group at Syracuse University. More than half of those convicted got no prison time or no more than they had already served awaiting their verdict.

The analysis of data from Justice's Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys also found that in the eight months ending last May, Justice attorneys declined to prosecute more than nine out of every 10 terrorism cases sent to them by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies. Nearly 4 in 10 of the rejected cases were scrapped because prosecutors found weak or insufficient evidence, no evidence of criminal intent or no evident federal crime.

The small number of long prison sentences shouldn't be a surprise because "terrorism is actually very rare â€” far more people are killed in ordinary street crime," said James Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Nevertheless, terrorism poses a risk of catastrophic loss of life, "so agencies must pursue a lot of leads that do not pan out," Dempsey added. "We can't blame the FBI for pursuing those leads, but we can blame them and the Justice Department for arresting people and making a big media splash when things don't pan out."
We can also take to heart just how wrong wrong wrong the Bush government and its dittohead apologists and fans are when it comes to civil rights.

This is a problem when it comes to the non-prisoners in Guantanamo.

At the penalty trial of al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, the government acknowledged that it has captured most of the Sept. 11 ringleaders including mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and operations coordinator Ramzi Binalshibh. Although prosecutors suggested they might be charged somewhere someday, the government has never disproved persistent allegations they were tortured during interrogations overseas and thus cannot be tried in U.S. courts.

If prosecutions "have been compromised by unlawful interrogation or surveillance, that would be worse than ironic," Aftergood said. "It would mean the government has performed in a self-defeating manner."You think?

This is a land ruled by laws, not by men. But the men in charge have really messed up. Now what? That's the question of this upcoming election.

While our troops enjoy the support of the vast majoriy of Americans, whether for or against the fiasco that has US military mired in Iraq, it seems that our troops are supporting usury on the part of America's banks.

These payday loan stores are increasingly becoming a problem near military bases, too, where soldiers seeking an advance on their (paltry) paychecks or a loan to fix their car are being charged exorbitant rates. The issue grew so acute that Congress commissioned a study on the rates. The researchers found that soldiers are being charged $15-$25 for a two week, $100 loan(!), and annual rates of up to â€” ready for this? â€” 780 percent(!!). The average borrower pays backs a total of $834 (!!!) on a $339 loan, and the debt problems can grow so urgent that they lose their security clearances (assumedly under the rationale that debt renders one susceptible to bribery).

So we have two forces at play here: The first is that we pay our service members so little theyâ€™re forced to enter into debt if they want a chance at middle class lifestyles. The second is that we sequester them on remote bases, where the available financial options fleece them. This must be really demoralizing for our troops. Oh, and let's remember the Bankruptcy Only for the Wealthy bill passed by the Republican Congress last year. Long after our soldiers and Marines have served the country, they'll still be servicing their debt to the banks who are preying upon them. In other words, their Duty and Honor will be privatized and subject to collections.

A bill that expands President Bush's ability to wiretap American phones and conduct other forms of domestic surveillance will likely appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee next Thursday, RAW STORY has learned.

The bill, which was written by judiciary chairman Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), and which has been widely and publicly excoriated by Democratic members of the committee, contains provisionsâ€”such as the institution of program-wide warrants, and warrants that do not expire for a yearâ€”that would weaken the strict limits that currently govern the FISA courts.and...

But a Senate aide who works closely with Specter tells RAW STORY that, â€œThe White House said they would veto any bill that includes a provision for judicial review.â€

â€œI canâ€™t say that the bills work hand in hand,â€ an aide told RAW STORY adding that, though Specterâ€™s bill does not make judicial review mandatory, â€œit makes it optional.â€
You just gotta love an administration that doesn't trust America's own judges, even though they've been cleared for top-secret intelligence and have their own top secret court.

Apparently Bush and Cheney just cannot be bothered. Maybe in King George's case, he's had his head turned by his blue blood heritage. What's dead-eye Dick's excuse?